


A Morn for Morning

by Darkarashi



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Clothed Sex, Coworkers to FWB to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Femdom, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Lots of death talk in later chapters, Oral Sex, slow emotional burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-07-17 09:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16092827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkarashi/pseuds/Darkarashi
Summary: Sometimes, if you  care too much, your caring cuts too deep. You can drown in how much you care, filling yourself to the brim with your sorrows, or you can stand above it all and try not to fall. Neither is healthy.The best thing to do is heal the wounds loss leaves behind. To feel and lay those feelings to rest.Unfortunately, Guardians are not particularly skilled at dealing with loss, least of all those who have experienced too much of it in their lives. Eris Morn has lost everything, and cannot let the loss go. Cayde-6 has lost everything, and cannot let himself acknowledge it for too long. Together, maybe they can figure it all out.





	1. The Way Things Begin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jimmy007](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jimmy007/gifts).



> This work was commissioned by Jimmy007, thank you so much!

Who they were before…doesn’t matter.

Not anymore.

There was a time where she only had two eyes, and there was a time where he had a body made of flesh instead of steel.

Those times are long, long gone.

Now, Eris Morn stands, obscured by shadow, comforted by the presence of the coolness, her back to the exit, an exit she can get to _first_ , get to _fastest_ in case of all things going wrong, in the Tower. Guardians visit her, many averting their eyes, but they listen now.

Perhaps not well.

But they listen.

She speaks of Omnigul, speaks of the horrors of the moon, the bluntness of what could be lost if they do this, and what will be lost if they do not. Her words are rarely seen as comfort, but she speaks them nonetheless. She speaks the horrors of what could come to them all, she gives word to the secrets and the Darkness. No one should lose what she has lost.

She stands, in the shadows.

A warning.

A reminder.

 _Everything can be lost_.

Meanwhile, across the way, down the long hallway full of Shaxx’s exuberant yelling, the Vanguard of Hunters who live the life she can live no longer stands, hands on the maps in front of him, joking and laughing and wheedling for answers. No stain touches his soul, nothing mars his chassis. Where Eris bears her scars openly, for there is no way to hide the way her eyes weep darkness, thick and black, down her cheeks, Cayde-6…is untouched.

He wears the cloak of the Vanguard who went before him and that is the only indication that _insufferable_ man ever gives of even caring about what has gone before him.

When there were quiet moments, when she was not surrounded by Guardians that stank of the Hellmouth and bearing the tatters of _her_ old life, _her_ old team, that she would watch Cayde-6 and wonder what it was in him that made him so immune to the wear and tear of life.

Was it the frame? The inorganic form and brain that allowed him to simply not think about these things, or put it to the side, or just choose not to process it?

The laughter, the jokes, all of it grated on her. Ikora and Zavala both carried themselves with a stern sort of resolute energy, not giving themselves over to riotous celebrations. Especially when a Fireteam comes in, missing a member, a cracked Ghost cradled in the hand of a sobbing Warlock.

Eris watched the scene play out. She had seen it more and more often as of late, more Fireteams going out and coming back down a member. Or not coming back at all.

The Ghost, broken and Lightless was handed over to a Warlock who was on-hand, and present in the Tower for exactly this reason. Respectfully, the Warlock, their hands covered in a brilliant white cloth embroidered with gold threads took the Ghost and held it as Ikora and Zavala comforted their subordinates.

A Hunter had fallen.

Eris found herself wondering if anyone had cared when her Fireteam had gone missing. Had Andal Brask painted the Vermillion Stripe until she had come home? Cayde-6 turned to have words with the Warlock holding the Ghost, and quietly put a small pot of paint out on the table, next to his map as the mourning Fireteam left. His Hunters would know what it meant.

She watched throughout the day as other Hunters came in, the scent of the wild hovering in the air around them, enchanting perfumes from far from here. They saw the paint and they _Knew_. Cayde-6 bowed his head when asked who it was, and told them. The moment was always shattered by a joke, by something Cayde-6 said instead of letting the mourning carry through, and Eris felt an anger building in her chest.

Hunter after Hunter walked back to the Wilds around them, a stripe down their foreheads.

Memory. Vengeance. Fury.

The day went on. Cayde-6 went on. Eris Morn went on.

Guardians came to talk to her, but the sun set before too long and the Crucible closed, and the Vanguard leaders left, the door to their Operations room sealing for the evening, keeping the secrets they so jealously hid from the younger Guardians out of reach. Eris was soon the last person standing there, in the shadows, facing a darkened hall.

On silent feet, she walked towards the Vanguard room. It was not rare that a Hunter died, but Eris felt the call of her old Class, whenever they did.

The door opened at her touch. Even without her Ghost (she felt the ages-old pang of _loss_ at the thought) there were rarely ever doors that were closed to her that would remain as such.

The lights in the room were out. She saw her path anyway.

The paint was left out, Cayde-6 would give Hunters another day to come take the news and choose if they would paint themselves or not, and Eris always took the choice. She knew what loss was. She would share their pain. And when Crota died, when this all ended, when she was done and freed of the past that haunted her, she would finally wipe away the red. She would finally know rest.

Carefully, she opened the neck of her armor, halfway undoing one side of the breast plate so she could pull her clothes open just enough for the cracked, dried, and in some places, _ancient_ stripes to be accessible. She dipped a finger into the paint, her touch passing through the same paint that Hunters had been using for centuries and solemnly, painted a new bar on her clothes, holding her armor open for long enough for the paint to dry.

She sighed, looking at the oldest paint, the paint that sent her to the Hellmouth. The paint from her team. The paint for every Hunter who has fallen since. Every Guardian who stepped into the Hellmouth and did not walk out of it. She will avenge them _all_.

“We gotta stop meeting like this, darlin’,” Cayde-6 drawled, stepping out of the corner, his lights all flicking on at once, casting the room in blue and orange glows. “Gotta meet at more respectable times or people will think we’re up to something.”

“Cayde-6. I thought you had left.”

“Thought wrong, wanted to see if you were going to come –“

“Of course I would. A Hunter fell. The only proper reaction is the Vermillion Stripe. Or have you forgotten?”

Cayde-6 watched her carefully out of a single sapphire eye. His regard was…curious. Judgmental. Concerned.

“No, of course not, but you do this for everyone. Why?”

“It is right.”

He took a step closer to her, and she held her ground. She was not one of _his_ Hunters. No, she belonged to a different class of Hunter, from Andal Brask’s time, from the time when the Vanguard was not given over to making _jokes_ in the light of the terror that pressed down over them all.

“Did you even know their name?” he asked her, nodding towards where the Warlock who had born the broken Ghost had gone. The Catacombs, the repository of dead Ghosts and broken bodies.

“No.”

Cayde-6’s head tilted questioningly and he drew closer. Eris did not move, watching him with all three of her eyes, carefully chronicling his every motion. Ghostless or no, she was _still_ a Guardian and there were certain things that could never be taken from her. And she would not be moved by an Exo Guardian who thought too much of himself and too little of the world around him.

“You can’t mourn them all, Eris. That’s too much for a single person to take.”

“Rich of you to offer me advice on my own mourning, Cayde-6,” she spat.

He held his hands up, defensively, shifting his weight back, but not, she noted, actually taking a step away.

“Woah, woah, woah now, I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole, I’m just sayin’, is all. I’m not trying to tell you you can’t do something, but you…can’t mourn them all. You’ll go mad with trying.”

“And you would have me mourn none of them, then? In your fashion.”

Her barbed words hit and Cayde-6’s brow-plates dropped down. The tension between them had always been palatable. Andal Brask could not have picked a worse replacement, and Eris had made that known more than once. They did not see eye to eye, and as he stepped in to close the distance between the two of them, the slight height differential not nearly as important as the fact that there was _tension_ in the air now. Thick. Present. Overwhelming.

“Hey, that’s uncalled for; you have no idea what it’s like to be Vanguard – what I have to go through – “

“Do not _speak_ to me of what your job entails, Cayde-6. I assure you, I know the _weight_ of duty.”

She did not have to do anything further to make her point. Cayde-6 was staring into her eyes, a challenge and then, a softening as he realized what it was that she was insinuating. He had the decency to look almost abashed and before an apology-by-way-of-a-joke could be made, Eris held a hand up.

“No. I do not want to hear it. I am going.”

She left before he could say anything else, sweeping out of the room, the new paint still wet and heavy against her chest.

If asked, she did not know why her heart was pounding. She couldn’t tell you why. Why her pulse raced, why adrenaline and dark thoughts poured through her mind, why she wanted to go back and start a _fight_. She ignored it. Plenty of dark thoughts and dark wishes lived in her now. One more was nothing.

* * *

Cayde-6, however, did not seem content to let their argument go. He shadowed her in all of the most annoying ways. He knew she was a Hunter to, so he _had_ to know that she knew all the tricks and all the little incidentals that he would try and pull to, for whatever reason, get her attention.

It was not subtle when Hunters would pass by, leaving little baubles in their wake.

Nor was it clever when a few of them tried to bandy jokes with her, jokes she knew that Cayde-6 had undoubtedly been the progenitor of.

None of it was clever.

None of it without her notice.

But that did not mean she needed to act on it. No, she let Cayde-6 think she was blind to it all. The gifts went untouched, unnoticed until someone knocked them over, and then she confessed that she had no idea what it was, or where it was from. She could see Cayde-6 watching her as she did it, and she watched him grow more and more agitated, to the point where she managed to actually catch him pointing towards her and saying _something_ to his Hunter, who, after some time, approached Eris to ask if she could –

“No. Whatever Cayde-6 asked you to ask me, no. He can come ask me himself. He can come here and talk to me if he has a question instead of sending a messenger. I may not have a Ghost, but he has legs and can come talk to me if he needs to.”

The Hunter shrugged a shoulder and left, not going back to Cayde-6, but out to the field. Eris stared down the hallway, towards Cayde-6, who made himself shockingly busy not looking at her. He would come to her, she was not going to go talk to him. If he wanted to talk, he could come find her.

Later that day, as the Tower was closing business for the day, he did, striding purposefully towards Eris. She considered looking like she was busy, like that he was just an unsurprising addition to her day, but no. She settled on staring him down, squaring her shoulders to him and waiting for him to say something. He could use his words like any reasonable man, and holding him accountable for that was by no means cruel of her.

She didn’t want to think about why her heartrate was picking up, why she was flooding with adrenaline, why his steps were picking up, why his brow plate was drawing down, why anything was happening because Cayde-6 swept past proper spacing, swept well into personal space, swept past even that.

His hands grabbed the back of her neck, pulling her up against him as he drove forward, his mouth plates (warm, so warm) pressing to her mouth, and he _kissed_ her.

Cayde-6 kissed her. Hard, forceful, demanding, _pleading._

And Eris…kissed him back.

The fire in her chest roared at his touch, and he pushed her back up against the wall, pinning her in place and kissing her hard. Desperate, passionate, everything that made _Cayde-6_ too much and too _much_ , and Eris let him. Eris urged him on. He touched her and she wanted it all. There was a hunger in her, deep-seated and raw, and painful.

Cayde-6 kissed her and Eris dropped down into hunger.

His mouth plates worked against her mouth, his tongue diving into her mouth, unafraid of the corruption of the Hive that dripped from her…enhancements. He kissed her hard and passionately, pressing his heavy Exo frame up against her organic body, her armor the only thing dispersing the weight around her so that she did not feel overly claustrophobic.

Her hands were slow to find somewhere to rest on him, but when they did, they settled at his hips. For a moment, she considered pushing him away, demanding that he leave her be, forcing him away and refusing to work until Cayde-6 had been punished for the transgression of backing her against the wall and kissing her like she was something precious and –

No, Eris pulled him closer, her fingers finding purchase on his armor. He felt good up against her. Weirdly good. Right.

He bit her lower lip, tugging on it barely gently enough to keep it proper. When she growled, he growled back, and she dug her fingers harder into his sides. He was an Exo, he could take a little rough work. His hands slid down her front, unafraid of the humming of the Hive-armor she wore, stupidly unafraid, stupidly gentle, and when they found her hips, stupidly unmovable as he pushed her up against the wall, pressing himself into every space that was allotted her.

He moaned brokenly, a static, screeching sound that would have hurt her ears if she had not spent years hounded by the calls of the Thrall. Her fingers tightened on his waist, pulling him harder against her, rocking her hips against his. He was built of hard edges. There was nothing soft in him, save in his brain chips, but the _pressure_ the ungodly _pressure_ of a heavy body up against hers, the anchoring weight, something that had been missing in her years on Luna, alone, in the Hellmouth.

Cayde-6 took her hint, pushing her harder, pressing one of his thighs between her legs, grinding himself up against her. It was brutal, it was pressure overwhelming, if she had been anyone except _who she was_ it would have been too much.

But she was Eris Morn.

And he was Cayde-6.

His mouth opened to hers and the glow of his jaw-lights nearly blinded all three of her eyes as her tongue, coated in the secrets of the Hive, met his. He might have been mumbling something to urge her on, might have been trying to find words for whatever it was that brought him over to her, but it didn’t matter. His tongue was occupied, moving slick synth-weave across Hive-touched flesh, and making no complaints at it.

He did nothing so bold as to try and disrobe her, here, in public, in the middle of the Vanguard Tower, but his hands roamed her body, skimming her armor, searching out the thin points where he could press and she would feel his touch and intention. Gunslinger, he was, and his heat burned at the cold shards of darkness that had wormed their way into her body. The contrast, the sensation, the way he was ever so gentle as to push but never so far as he did with his words –

“ _Yes_ ,” she hissed against his metal plates, her fingers working into the loops of his belt, tugging him fruitlessly harder against her body.

There was no more space for him to occupy, nothing else he could do to give her more while they were pressed up against this wall except to rock his hips in time with hers, to grant them both the gift of friction and pressure.

A groan tumbled out of his vocal boxes, the sensations too much for him to handle in quiet solemnity. He tried to pull his head back, tried to get some space so he could reposition, maybe offer a quick transmat to a more private location, something really clever and stunning and just super great cause he was the _best_ with words, but Eris chased his mouth down.

No words, he wasn’t going to speak, not right now, he wasn’t going to ruin this with his stupid mouth. His mouth could be put to so much better use and she intended to teach him that. Starting with not letting him speak another word until she had convinced him of the virtue of silence.

He shuddered against her, a full-body tremble wracking his frame as her fingers, familiar with Exos, and trained by Hunter ingenuity found his weak spots. He wore armor that was thin, there was little need for him to wear any, as he stood in the Tower, behind a desk, listening. He was also an Exo, a war machine, whose body was built to take damage and keep going. But there were always places where the plates were thin, or where synth-weave skin could be felt, or where wires could be touched.

She found them all.

Her gloves, clawed as they were, pressed in on the sensitive points of his body and he managed a broken, “Er-r-riss-kt” against her mouth as she pushed him back just far enough to get her feet in the right position.

And then, in a burst of movement and _force_ , she turned and pushed Cayde-6 up against the wall he had pinned her to, holding him in place, sweeping his legs wide so she could step between them and pull him down to her height. He, shocked, did nothing to stop her, just moving with her demands until he realized that he was backed against the wall, and pinned.

“H-hey,” he started, until Eris grabbed him by the horn and twisted his head to the side so she could bite the exposed wires at the side of his neck.

Cayde-6 _melted_ against the wall, scrambling for purchase and finding none except the points of pressure where Eris held him still. She held tight to his horn, pinning his head back against the wall, not letting him up, not letting him take back control. His hands found her waist and he rocked his hips against hers. She could feel his cock, restrained by his pants, but heavy and hot and hard and _there_. Her free hand clawed down his side as her mouth continued to work across his neck, the sharp, high smell of ozone and oil assaulting her nose.

His voice cracked and broke on his pleasure as Eris held him steady, her teeth in his shoulder. When he tried to reciprocate, tried to reach a hand down to her ass, just because she was a Hunter and everyone knew that Hunters had the _best_ asses, she caught his wrist in her hand. He struggled, trying to overpower her because he was not a man who took kindly to being denied anything. So Eris pinned his hand to the wall and pressed her hips against his, _hard_.

“O-o-oh by t-th-the T-t-rrr-ravelerr-r,” Cayde-6 moaned, his head jerking against her hold on his horn.

She was unmoved.

Her tongue licked a stripe of Hive-tainted touch up the side of his neck. The cold of the void, of the Darkness was answered with a surge of Solar Light so overwhelming and potent that Eris felt whatever remained of her own Light stir again. She remembered what it felt like to hold the Sun in her chest and the echo of it made her ache.

She set her teeth into the exposed wiring of Cayde-6’s neck, just beneath his jaw, right over some of the more delicate and sensitive parts of his anatomy and he nearly fell to the ground at her feet.

Now _there_ was a thought.

Wrestling control of his vocal processors back from their static-heaving was hard, but Cayde-6 had a really great, excellent idea that had very little to do with the fact that he was really turned on, and a lot to do with the fact that he –

Wait no, the idea was because he was really turned on. Yep.

“H-h-h-hey,” he stammered, trying to get over his body’s propensity to lose its cool as soon as he got worked up. He had something important to say. Something about a transmat, a bed, and seeing how long two Hunters could really go at it.

Of course, that was when one of the Frames that cleaned the tower started their rounds, beginning with opening the door to the Vanguard Operations Room behind the two of them. Eris took a step back and away immediately, re-establishing the more familiar boundaries of propriety in a single step. Cayde-6, back still pressed up against the wall, knees bent, hand still where Eris had had it pinned, optics blown out wide in blistering arousal. His mouth hung slack and he just…stared.

Eris considered what it was that she wanted to say, if anything. The Frame behind them went about their job, saying nothing to the two Hunters.

Cayde-6 stayed where he was, pressed up against the wall, trying very hard to think literally anything useful to say in this moment that would get Eris to come back to him and go back to what they had been doing because –

“My apartments. Lower City. Five minutes precisely.”

He blinked, trying to parse just what it was that was being suggested through the fog of arousal. Eris was gone by the time his optics refocused, whisked away by whatever Hive magic it was that she wielded.

“Oh! O-o-oh, _shit_ -kt!” he said as soon as he finally registered what it was that was being suggested.

Transmat completely forgotten, Cayde-6 pushed himself off the wall, turned, and scrambled up the ramp and out. He only had the most vague of ideas of where she lived, but there was a deep seated need in him to find out just what it was that she was going to do. A quick pause to adjust his pants and get his cock back behind his protective plates – otherwise he was absolutely going to cum in his pants on the way over – and he was off on the race to go find out what he was going to be rewarded with if he made it there.

* * *

Cayde-6 skidded to a stop outside the door to Eris Morn’s apartment – Sundance had been so kind as to figure out where Eris lived and provided him a countdown to when time was “up” for him. He’d managed to get there in four minutes and thirty seconds, and when he tried the handle, it was locked.

“Aw, what?”

He tried the handle again, confused. She had said five minutes and he’d made it before the time limit so what the fuck was this? His shoulders slumped. He had had such high hopes. Why, he wouldn’t be able to say, because he and Eris were really probably better off if –

The door opened, and Eris, halfway out of her armor reached out, grabbed him by his collar, and yanked him into her apartment. His eyes adjusted immediately to the darkness, and he was not surprised to see that she preferred her living quarters to be close in and claustrophobic, but he was surprised to be thrown, rather bodily, to the side.

The side of his leg clipped a low bed and he fell down onto it with a shocked yelp. Eris was on top of him immediately, her teeth digging into his lower mouth-plate. He didn’t want to question it because her hands were at his belt, tugging his pants open, sliding her clawed gloves down his crotch-plate. His cock sprang free and Eris purred.

She did not bother trying to disrobe beyond what she had already. No armor, but still almost completely covered. She opened the bottom of her pants up, filleting the material open with some hidden blade or another and sank down onto him with a hiss.

Cayde-6 reached up to put his hands on her thighs, just a gentle gesture, and she smacked his hands away. Eris growled some Hive incantation, and Cayde-6 felt the clicking of a thousand spiders race up his arms and pin them out from his sides, down onto her bed. She rode him hard and fast, her hands on his stomach, and Cayde-6 did his level fucking best to pump his hips up into her.

Her body was chill against his, a drain that sucked his Light and heat into her, and that really hardly mattered at all because she _really_ knew how to ride dick. Eris was strong, Hunter’s had to be, and her inner muscles clamped down on his cock nearly hard enough to make him go cross-eyed with the pleasure of it all.

She leaned down over him, pressing her hands over the vents on his chest, holding them shut beneath his shirt. The weight of another’s body, and the internal pressure building up and warring against each other was one of Cayde-6’s favorite things whenever he got to fuck. Having it be _Eris Morn_ on top of him, riding him like he was some sort of unruly beast that she wanted to tame was…yeah. Good. Really good.

One of her hands lifted off of his chest, and the vent she had been covering popped open under his clothes, venting some of the pressure out of his chest. He took the extra breath of space the movement afforded him, and before he could say anything about that, she had a hand on his horn, pushing back, making him arch his back and expose his throat. Her mouth sealed over the center of his throat, and whatever the fuck Cayde-6 had been thinking about saying just left.

Hands pinned, a hand on his horn, and one of the _hottest_ Hunters to have ever have walked a patrol on his cock, Cayde-6 really did not think he had anything he could say that would add to the situation. His voice box fritzed out, and his static, stammering moans filled the claustrophobically closed-in room. Eris was silent over him, save for the hitches in her breath when he hit somewhere particularly _good_ in her.

Which he tried to do over and over and over again. He was, if he did say so himself, so very good at fucking her.

She did not move to get him undressed, and while he was fine with a good fuck with someone as _gorgeous_ as Eris Morn, he really did like seeing what was under the armor. He liked being naked and open and vulnerable with his partners, and it seemed like maybe he was just out of luck. Unfortunate.

He could work around it, maybe convince her that –

The Hive-magic on his arms slackened and with a sigh, Eris rocked back, her glowing eyes flickering shut behind her mask. Her lips peeled back, revealing ever-so-slightly-too-sharp teeth stained with the inky magic of the Hive that flowed through her, and Cayde-6 felt his chest click. That was really pretty.

She was pretty.

She was also moving off of his lap, his softening cock retracting behind his plates. He reached up for her, looking forward to the best part of any sort of sex – the cuddling afterwards, but she evaded him and stood up out of her bed. In the darkness of her room, the only light was emanating from Cayde-6’s mouth plates, and her glowing eyes. He lounged comfortably, trying his damndest to look inviting and comfortable so she’d come back down to bed.

Eris looked at him, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly. Her mouth opened, as if she was about to say something, and Cayde-6 looked up at her, expectantly. Without the bulk of her armor on, he could see that she was far from changed from the Eris-who-was before the first fireteam went down into the Hellmouth. She was fit, shaped for battle and fury and nothing had changed that in her.

She was _beautiful_. Annihilating.

She could kill him in a moment, without thinking about it, without having to try. What she had lost and what she had gained were measured on two different scales but –

Darkness touched by Light wrapped around him and he found himself dumped, unceremoniously, outside of her front door. Blinking, picking himself up and doing up his belt, he looked at the door in front of him. That was…unexpected.

He knocked on her door.

“Eris? Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry.”

There was a pause, one nearly long enough for him to think he really had fucked up and that he was going to have to take a long time trying to compose a really heartfelt and _serious_ note before the door opened a crack. Eris peered out of the darkness at him.

“No.”

“Okay well then –“

“Thank you, Cayde-6. This was…good. We will do it again some time. Goodbye.”

The door clicked shut and it took him a moment to realize she…

“Alright, I’ll pick you up, uh, Thursday? After the Vanguard Ops close? I know a ramen place that does takeout?”

No response. He stood, awkwardly, staring at her door, his clothes rumpled and his adrenaline still up for a few more minutes before walking away. That was probably a yes. He got a few blocks away before turning to Sundance and saying, with no small amount of pride: “ _I_ have a date with Eris Morn on Thursday.”

“It’s not a date, Cayde.”

“It’s not a date with that attitude, for sure.”

"She didn't even say _yes_."

"She also did not say no."

"She shut the door in your face."

"...You make an excellent point, I'll just ask her tomorrow but for right now, can you just let me have this?"

Sundance rolled her optic, spun her shell, and vanished into motes of Light, leaving Cayde-6 to walk the long way home.


	2. A Way Through the Darkness

Thursday came so, so slowly. Cayde-6 was nearly anxious as the day came closer. Eris had not been particularly forthcoming on any further information, or even giving him a proper “yes”, but she also hadn’t said no. She just stood where she always stood and stared, placidly, into mid-distance. Guardians came and went, and he didn’t trust a single damn one of them to pass a message between him and Eris, so he tried to wait, patiently, for the end of every day so he could go try and talk to her, but she always managed to be _gone_ by the time he was there.

It would be really annoying if Cayde-6 didn’t love those sorts of games. The fun sort of back and forth, the witty repartee in the form of the chase, Cayde-6 loved it.

Thursday came, and he had to keep himself very still as the unending meetings happened. Every so often, he would sneak a glance over to where Eris was standing. He thought, for a moment, that he saw her looking up at him, her gaze utterly incomprehensible to him, but he was still pretty sure that she looked at him.

He was also pretty sure that she smiled at him.

The servos in his chest started spinning up, and he was really just so thankful that both Ikora and Zavala were used to him being distracted and looking out towards the door that lead away from the Ops Table and didn’t think anything of it.

Cayde-6 was also thankful that other than the gentle whirring of the cooling fans in his torso, there were no outwardly indicative signs of how excited he was about the prospect of getting to take _Eris Morn_ out for dinner.

Gods, he was the luckiest fucking Exo in the entire world. The end of the day came slowly, and then all in a rush, with a burst of activity from his Hunters. By the time he could tear himself away, Eris was gone from her position. A pang of disappointment, of realization, of thinking maybe he had overstated just what it was that Eris wanted from him.

If all he ever got from her was that torrid make out session and then the confusingly arousing fuck back in her rooms, he could probably be okay with that. It wasn’t like his memory would mess it up, he’d always be able to return back to it if he really wanted to – and he did, don’t get him wrong, that was easily top five “Fucking another Hunter” experiences he’d ever had and he’d fucked, and been fucked by, Andal Brask, so he had a pretty high “high” bar.

Still, he was a little disappointed. In a weird way, he had really wanted to spend more time with her. Not weird-weird, but…he’d been excited. Like, really excited. He wanted to talk to Eris, to get to know her better, to maybe peel off a few more layers of armor so he could press his face to her body and see if he couldn’t get her to come to the same conclusion as everyone else had about his beautiful, beautiful horn.

Maybe with some more work, maybe if he could talk to her some more, maybe if he could just get her back alone in her corner and see if she could be more amendable to things if he knelt down and pressed his mouth to the crux of her legs and made her chant whatever Hive nonsense she used to do whatever it was that she did when she did it.

It was a plan, but he had to admit, he was a little hurt. He had kind of hoped that he would have at least gotten a little bit of a heads-up that this was going to happen.

Sighing, Cayde-6 made the nearly uncharacteristic decision to sit around and focus on his work for a little longer than was necessary. Ikora and Zavala knew better than ask him why he had chosen to focus, lest they break his focus and have to wait for him to catch up later on. Quietly, the Vanguard went about slowly clearing the room out from around him, until Cayde-6 was the only person standing there, looking down at his map and the reports of his Hunters, concentrating hard as he tried to block out the disappointment.

He could deal with that later. Right now he had other things to do.

Somehow, between one moment and the next, a note appeared on his map, anchored down with a suspiciously Hive-looking rock.

Cayde-6 looked around quickly, trying to suss out the messenger’s location so that he could grill them about why the fuck they thought they could just sneak up on him like that. If it was one of his Hunters, he was absolutely going to send them out on an annoying Patrol as a thank-you and don’t do that sort of thing. There was no one in the area, however. He was alone.

Carefully, he reached for the note, unfolding it and reading it quickly. In a tight, spidery handwriting, there was simple sentence:

[Apartment, in an hour. Shio, more fish than chicken, extra eggs, no seaweed.]

Cayde-6 blinked owlishly at the note, his brain-chips a little slow on the uptick.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” he hissed, turning away from his unfinished work and bolting.

“Sundance, Sundance get my order and hers in at the shop, I’m gunna be there as soon as possible.”

There was a chirp of assertion from his Ghost, and Cayde-6 made his way towards the ramen shop. It was his favorite, he knew the way to that shop about as well as he knew the way back to his own apartment, so his hustle was only a little necessary.

The main thing was that the time of day it was, the shop was busy. And busy shops meant that it would take longer to get his order. And if it took longer he might be late. There was no way for him to cut in line, he had tried that so many times and if he hadn’t already burned the “I have a _really_ hot date” attempt in the past decade, he would have tried it again right now.

Unfortunately, no. He got his order in, Sundance told him as much, and then it was a big ol’ game of “Hurry the fuck up and wait.”

Which was why he was standing in the back of the shop, trying his best to not bounce his knee or otherwise indicate that he was impatient. He could _swear_ that the staff here could sense when he was in a hurry and then they’d slow down to a glacial pace. It still took _so long_ for the ramen to be ready and while he really truly, and honestly, appreciated the effort that had gone into it, he wanted it to be ready _faster_ because he was going to run out of ti-

“Cayde-6, your order is-“

“ _Okay thank you bye_ ,” Cayde-6 said in a rush, throwing down what he was pretty certain was about seven thousand glim too much for what he should have been charged and left in a damn of a hurry.

He took the takeout, and bolted. Being careful to not jostle or spill the ramen as he made his way to Eris’ apartment, Cayde-6 moved as fast as he was capable. Sundance let him know how much time was remaining as he tried to hustle his way over there. He didn’t want to be late, because he was more than just a little bit certain that if he was late, Eris would just not let him in, and then he’d have to eat sad, seven thousand glim ramen at home. Alone.

He really didn’t want to spend tonight alone.

Coming up to Eris’ door, he barely had the chance to get his hand up to knock before it opened. Just a crack, but even peering through the dusky light into the darkness of her room, he knew he’d been anticipated.

“You are late.”

“I came as soon as I got the note – the shop was really busy, I got what you asked for, can I at least give you-“

“Come in.”

The door opened barely wide enough for Cayde-6 to step in, and as soon as he had stepped through, Eris was behind him. She closed the door as soon as he was through it. There were no lights on, and Eris was quick to take the bag of food from Cayde-6’s hands and walk into the darkness.

Like, sure it was her room, and Cayde-6 was an Exo and that did come with some pretty great night vision so he wasn’t going to complain too much, but he did like seeing her in natural light.

Still, it was early on in their night, so he wasn’t going to be presumptuous just yet. She walked a short distance in, and then put the food down on a small table in front of a low couch.

“Would you care to sit?”

Cayde-6 sat next to her, careful not to be _too_ presumptuous about what was going to be happening tonight. Still, though, he sat close to her, their shoulders touching, and Eris didn’t move away. Emboldened, Cayde-6 settled in on the couch (there were only a few concerning lumps in it, but he was made of metal, it really did not matter) and reached for his ramen. They ate in a comfortable silence.

In the dark.

But hey, date was a date. The ramen was good, and he got to spend time with Eris. She didn’t try and poison him or stab him or anything. He’d had far, far worse dates, admittedly.

“Did you…complete your day’s tasks, satisfactorily, Cayde-6?” Eris asked, stiltingly, after she was about halfway through her ramen.

“…Yeah, actually. I got a lot of work done after everyone else had left. It was easier to do all that when it was quiet. And I was worried you didn’t want to see me, so I was trying to distract myself. Worked pretty well. Hope Zavala doesn’t catch on,” Cayde-6 said with a laugh, turning and grinning at Eris.

The orange lights of his mouth brightened, lighting up the room. Eris blinked a couple times before slowly turning back to her own food. It seemed whatever he had said had…caught her off guard. He didn’t try and explain himself, wanting to see what she would do.

Her hands fluttered briefly, as she considered whether or not she wanted to reach for her food or keep her hands in her lap. Watching her hands work was a treat – she _was_ a Hunter, no matter what any stupid and wrong people said behind her back, and her hands were a delight. Nimble fingers and delicate joints, she gestured, mostly to herself, thinking through whatever it was that had her attention, currently.

Cayde-6 rather hoped she’d turn that attention to him, but it seemed as if her mind was made up. She reached for her ramen and wordlessly, stood up from the couch. She walked into the darkness, and Cayde-6 watched her go. Gods, she had a great ass.

Eris returned moments later, sans ramen. She must have put the ramen away in whatever kitchen she had, wherever it was. Thankfully, Cayde-6 was almost done with his own ramen, so when Eris came back and sat next to him, he was just in the middle of finishing his last bite of ramen.

She was careful, waiting until he moved to put the bowl down, waiting until his mouth was opening to ask her what she’d like to do next, to strike.

Her mouth hit his like a thunderclap, fitting for an arcstrider like her, her lips crashing against his mouth-plates. Confidently, easily, she pulled his legs up onto the couch, straddling his hips, working her fingers back behind his skull, pulling him up against her harder.

Cayde-6 moaned, surprised and very, very into it. Dinner and a makeout sesh was pretty much one of the best sorts of dates he could think of. He was ever so happy that Eris agreed. He reached up to brush her hood off her head, and she smacked his hands away. Again, the skittering feeling of spiders crawling across his body greeted him and his arms were jerked away to get pinned to the side of her couch, keeping him from touching her as her mouth moved further down his neck.

“Er-r-ris-kt?” he mumbled, his brain-chips a little slow to catch up and really parse just what it was that was going on right then. He was _super_ into it, don’t get him wrong, he really was very much enjoying this but he would rather –

“Uh-nghh-hh-h,” came the ratcheting screech out of his throat as Eris’ finger-knife skated across the front of his pants, splitting his belt (damn) and his trousers (hot) open for her mouth to slide down against the overheating plates of his hips ( _very_ hot).

Her tongue flicked across the seam of the pair of plates that kept his cock safely, and subtly, hidden away for most of the day, and Cayde-6’s back arched like a Nightstalker’s bow. _Fuck_ those plates were sensitive, and the feeling of the unending cold of Eris’ mouth against his already over-heating body was just…so good.

With her tongue pressing against the seam, her free hands roamed his body. One reached out to grab onto his leg, fingers curling into the heavy plate and wires that formed his lean thigh and force his leg flat down against the couch, keeping him from bucking too wildly, as the other slid up his chest, under his shirt, to toy with the opening of his sternum-vent, which had already flicked open and started hissing.

If you could believe it, in all of his _many_ years, no one had ever fingered his vents with the same sort of cold, calculating precision Eris apparently possessed, and the contrasting sensation of his hot body and her could mouth and hands was a delicious sort of sensory interplay. He arched his chest up against her fingers, inviting them deeper into his cooling vent and she obliged with a wry grin.

“Tell me how it feels, Cayde-6.”

Her voice was pitched lower than normal, an accent picking up in the background of her tone, one Cayde-6 was generally certain he would have otherwise been able to parse if his plates weren’t sliding open and if _Eris Goddamn Morn_ wasn’t licking a wet, delicious stripe up his cock. Her mouth toyed with the head of his cock, her cold lips deliciously contrasting to how much he was burning up inside, and as her mouth slowly descended, her fingers penetrated his vent, and the dual sensation of penetrating and being penetrated was.

Yes.

Very good, more of that.

“Tell me how it _feels_ , Cayde-6,” she demanded, her mouth pulled from his cock as her fingers delved deeper into the vent.

He moaned, long and low, his back arching up against her fingers as he scrambled, all at once, to find words. Her fingers plunged deeper into his vent and his eyes rolled into the back of his skull. The _cold_ speared through him as Eris laughed.

“S-s-so g-good-kt, Eris, p-p-please,” he managed to get out after an especially mind-bending dip of her head.

Her tongue was definitely too long for what most humans would consider normal. Cayde-6 was very aware of this as it wrapped twice around the entire width of his cock as her mouth slid all the way down to the base, her lips pressing flush to his hip-plates again. She swallowed the head of his cock down against the back of her throat and spiderwebs of Solar-Light split across his vision.

Somewhere, dimly, he was aware of Sundance sighing blissfully as Eris went about giving him, bar none, the best fucking blowjob that had ever been given under the Traveler’s presence.

The hand she had placed on his thigh was an immovable presence, holding one of his legs flat so he could not buck into her mouth (not that he would, he was _something_ of a gentleman…sometimes) but the restraint of three of his four limbs was starting to drive him up the wall. He wanted to touch her, to thread his fingers through her hair, to pet down her cheek, to, if nothing fucking else, to just relax against the couch and really enjoy the sensation.

Instead though. Instead he wanted to move and he couldn’t, and that was driving him up the fucking wall.

Not for nothing, but Cayde-6 was pretty sure he’d kill an entire horde of Eliksni to have use of his hands back.

Eris’ fingers plunged into his vent, fingering the sensitive synth-weave that formed the sides of it as her mouth worked Hive-sin down his cock. If it had been literally anyone else oozing so much slick _Darkness_ down his cock, driving back the Light, leaving him gasping with a chest full of Solar-Light that had nowhere to go but back into his sensors, overloading everything, making him really, truly wonder if he was going to accidentally melt something in his chest.

At the same time, she was fingering his vent with all the attention and care that he’d have used on her slit if he had been given the chance to have her underneath him for just a _moment_ or seventeen. Twenty moments. Four hours.

Fuck he just wanted to touch her, to give her the pleasure she was giving him. She kept him pinned though and that made him ache for something even more. This was good. This was so good.

Heat vented out of his chest, pressing against Eris’ fingers. The pressure that his body naturally built up when he got too excited needed somewhere to go, and the vents that lined his chest were sensitive. Sensitive and something people so rarely paid any mind to, and now Eris was fingering his vent and he really, really, needed to figure out how words worked so he could say something intelligent about how good it felt but really, all he could manage was a static moan.

A broken, utterly wrecked static moan, that drew an answering chuckle out of Eris as she kept doing that damnable thing with her tongue that he could only repeat over and over again:

“ _P- **le** as-kt-e!_”

Eris kept at her work, her fucking goddamn tongue wrapping around his cock, jacking him off with slow, sinuous movements of her fucking _tongue_. And at the same time her lips were still moving up and down and her fingers were delving deeper into his chest, the sharp edge of her finger-tip blade pressing up against some very sensitive and delicate wiring.

“Постой,” Eris said, somehow, with her mouth full of his cock.

He had no idea what it meant, but he held painfully, deliriously still as her bladed fingers dug deeper into his body. He could feel the blade’s kiss against all the delicate internal mechanisms. _Fuck_ that was hot.

Staying still so as not to accidentally allow Eris to filet him open like a fucking fish, Cayde felt the knife dance across all sorts of very important and very delicate wires and plates inside his chest. He dared not to even vent out pressure, shunting power to his secondary series of vents, along the top of his shoulder and under where his pectoral muscles would be, had he been human.

All the while, her mouth and tongue kept at their work on his cock. He was stuck between the dueling need to thrust into her mouth, and the realization that if he did, he could jerk her hands into hurting him something terribly. If he had ever been more aroused by something, he wasn’t really capable of remembering it because this was _amazing_.

Eris grinned around his cock, her tongue still working up and down his cock. He threw his head back with a cry, his mouth opening in a nearly-silent howl as he struggled to keep as still as possible while his systems went into overload.

Or they would’ve, had Eris not drawn off of him, entirely, all at once, with a pleased, breathy: “да!”

Cayde-6 thrashed, pulling hard against the restraints that laced all the way up his arms, kicking a foot out with a desperate, high keen. Out of his mind with want, desire, and aching for touch, whatever words that it was that spilled out of his mouth were hardly coherent. His chest heaved for a good long moment, the vent that Eris had been _fingering_ hissing angrily, spitting out the pressure that had built up in his chest.

He blinked motes of Light out of his eyes, his chips crashing back down into coherency as the blinding edge of _pleasure_ faded from him.

Jerking his head from side to side and trying to pull his arms back from whatever was holding him down, Cayde-6 panted. Catching his breath was hard, and it was harder when he saw Eris’ glowing eyes regarding him carefully. When his own breath slowed down, he could swear he could hear her breathing, just the ever so slightly bit harder, harsher, and by the Traveler that was _ridiculously_ hot.

“C-kt-C’mon, Er-r-rissss, let-kt me u-u-up…P-pleas-kte?” he panted, his voice shorting out more often than it _usually_ did when he got worked up.

She shook her head, eyes shutting for a moment.

“веди себя хорошо,” she growled, climbing up until she was neatly settled in his lap, her hips settling on his midsection, leaving his poor, weeping cock pressing up against the back of her still-clothed ass.

“M-my R-r-ussian is-kt, is-kt, is-kt,” he started, only to be stuck in a repeating loop as she _pressed_ her ass back against his cock and as worked up as Cayde-6 was, it was rather a forgone conclusion that literally _anything_ like that would get him to shut up as his processors all vied for his attention all at once.

“Tell me how much you _want_ it, Cayde-6,” Eris purred, rolling her hips back against – and yes, alright what he was going to describe next was kind of fucking redundant given he was an Exo, give him a fucking break, the hottest Hunter ever was pressing her ass against – his hard as steel cock.

“Y-y-y-you c-c-can’kt do this t-to m-m-me,” he gasped.

Eris grabbed him by his beautiful, beautiful horn and pushed his head back as far as she could so her mouth could seal over his throat.

Pinned down, incapable of moving and taking what he wanted from Eris, he only could lay there and take it. And gods, was Eris insistent upon him taking it. Her tongue laved down the wires and plates that formed his neck, worming into places that most everyone else had never managed to touch, which of course made all of the oft-unused sensors there light up like goddamn _Sol_ under her touch.

Flickers of Solar Light started creeping in down his chest plates. Eris shivered in pleasure as his heat soaked into her body and she rolled her hips harder against him.

“ _Say it_ ,” she hissed.

“I-I-I-I-I… _I_ n-n-need, need y-you, n-n-need, p-p-pleas-kte? P-skt-skk-k-k-t,” Cayde-6 moaned, jerking his hips up against her, trying for friction, for anything, for whatever she would give him.

“ _More_.”

God shit buggering damn fuck that was hot. She _pressed_ herself back against his cock, taunting him with the presence of where he ached, _ached_ to be, and when he keened her name and arched under her touch, she only chuckled.

“Er-rr-rr-rr-rr-riskt. P-skt-leas-kt! F-fuck-t, _p-skt-lea-ske,_ ” he begged. He begged, honest to god begged Eris to do _anything_. Literally anything. Anything

She trembled atop him, it was a delicious pressure, delicious everything, delicious, delicious, delicious.

But really, he wanted more. If she was amendable, he _really_ wanted more. Eris moaned something as he got a particularly good angle on her for just a brief moment, and Cayde-6 immediately committed the sound to memory. It was a _really_ good sound, good enough to make him almost miss out on seeing her reach back behind her with her clawed finger.

“N-n-no, d-don’tkt wan-n-nt to t-t-ear an-nother-rr-rr-rr p-pair. J-juskt t-take them-m-m off? Pl-leaskt? P-skt-lease Eris?”

She sighed, looking up at him, and pushing herself forward on his chest. Her mouth met his in a deliriously soft kiss, and her hands slid down his chest, and then skipped off his body to her own hips.

“If you’re good, милый, I will, but _good boys_ don’t cum until they’re told to.”

He chuckled, a staticky, broken sound, but nodded quickly. It was a good thought, a favorite one, actually, it was a fun game, a pleasant back and forth, really.

“Y-y-yeskt. Yes-s-skt. I w-will b-b-b-be skt-o g-good f-f-for y-ou, Eri-skt.”

She blinked at him, startled for a moment before smiling at him. His mechanical heart skipped a beat and he couldn’t help the beatific grin that spread across his face. The spiderwebbing Hive-energy that held his arms down slackened and before he could wrap her up in his embrace and just…he didn’t know, but man was he gunna do _something_ , Eris stopped him.

“Hands on the armrest, keep them there. Be _good_.”

His mouth clicked shut with an audible sound and his cock jumped erratically in arousal. Carefully, slowly, demonstrating he was just the _best_ boy, Cayde-6 reached up to grab the side of the arm-rest, his elbows jutting upward

 _Fuck_ that was hot.

Eris shimmied out of her pants, only rising up off of him for the barest few moments it took for her to get out of her pants, leaving Cayde-6 with the visual that he was pretty sure would have killed a lesser man.

Eris Morn was wearing thigh-high stockings, a garter belt and black lace panties under her pants. He nearly took his hands off of the couch, immediately overwhelmed with the need to touch, and feel, and –

“Close your eyes, Cayde-6.”

He whimpered, throwing his head back and screaming as Eris, showing him no fucking mercy, pulled his cock back and sank down onto it. His hands clenched around the couch-arm, almost tight enough to break it as Eris set about riding him. He wanted to look at her, wanted to watch, but she had told him he couldn’t cum without her permission, and she had told him to close his eyes, and if he watched _Eris Morn_ riding him in thigh-highs and garters he was going to cum immediately.

But if he didn’t, he had to stare at a blacked-out ceiling and keep his eyes closed, he would just _feel_ her riding him, which was impossibly hot and made him want to cum.

Her hands pushed against his stomach and chest, stabilizing herself as she rode him, and Cayde-6 drowned in the sensation of it. She cursed in Russian atop him, grinding harder against his cock the more he struggled beneath her. Flickers of Solar Light touched the edges of his plates and with confidence his past lovers had never even exhibited, she flicked open the center vent on his chest and then her fingers were back in his center vent. His voice shorted out and his vision went spotty at the edges. It took every ounce of control he had in his body to not cum immediately.

He had to yank control from everything – _everything_ – else in him to keep  him from cumming, clamping down on the internal mechanisms that would allow him his release, despite the pain of it. Atop him, Eris purred, driving herself down against him harder and faster, her muscles, her beautiful, beautiful muscles letting her seek her own pleasure with only the barest regards for how Cayde-6 was struggling, beautifully, beneath her.

“Eriskt, E-rr-rrr-rr-rriskt, Eris, ple-eaaa-skt. Pl-easkte, _plea-skt-e_ , l-let me-“

“Of _course_ , милый, cum for me,” she purred.

Overload rarely felt as sweet as it did just then, and Cayde-6’s moan was broken and keening as everything crashed through him all at once. He managed one good, determined, deep thrust of his own up into her before his legs went limp and his frame twitched, a little helplessly, beneath her.

He came to in pieces, still shaking in places, like Eris had shocked him with the Arc energy she used to wield as a Strider, and grinning. That had been…

Oh she was still on top of him, wearing her usual under-armor long-sleeved top but yeah, the lingerie underneath.

This had been great. Maybe even the best, but he did ever so love to try things out again and again and again to make sure he had the right of it all, and for Eris, he’d do this every night. Every damn night, and most of the mornings. He stared at her, grinning widely at the sight before him.

“You’re _gorgeous,_ Eris,” he gasped out as soon as he was mostly certain his voicebox was done shorting out with pleasure.

Carefully, he pulled his hands down from where he had them on the couch’s arm. Eris flinched, pulling away from him ever so slightly. Blinking, _understanding_ , Cayde-6 slowly put his hands back where they had been, moving smoothly and carefully. He didn’t want to spook her, didn’t want to be dumped outside of her apartment right away, especially because she had rather ruined his belt and that needed some proper fixing before he actually could walk around without his pants sliding off his hips.

Not that being a naked Exo was like…particularly bad, or anything, just that he preferred to be clothed when he walked through the streets. In his _own_ apartment, however, that was much a different story.

“Is this…better?” he asked carefully, looking up at her, trying to maintain eye contact and not get distracted by the feeling of lace-clad thighs against his own.

There was a long, long moment before Eris nodded, her fingers fanning out across his chest again. Her touch was gentler now, more hesitant, but, Cayde-6 was very pleased to note that she wasn’t getting off of his lap, and she wasn’t trying to kick him out, so every moment from here on out was counted as a victory.

“Is there anything else I can do to make you comfortable?”

His voice was soft, and low, brimming with the warmth of Sol that burned in his chest at all times. He was a Gunslinger, his emotions rid him hard, and he was filled with a capacity for adoration and care quite unlike most anyone else. The heat and warmth of Sol brimmed up in his chest as Eris dropped her chin down, her eyes drifting halfway closed.

“Close your eyes, Cayde-6.”

He dared to drift his eyes low one last time, taking in the sight of Eris Morn’s thighs wrapped around his hips, before nodding and closing his eyes. Her fingers, without the blade out, he was ever so thankful for, danced up his chest, smoothing out his shirt before reaching up to cradle his chin in her fingers. Carefully, she traced out the lines of his chin-plate before her weight shifted forward.

Her lips met his, and Cayde-6 sighed happily. Keeping his hands off of her when all he wanted to do was wrap her into his arms was hard, but the reward was a sweet kiss, one devoid of need or burning desire. Just a kiss. A sweet thing, a delicate touch of lips to mouth-plate as her hands worked across the sliced pieces of his clothing. He shifted his hips helpfully – or at least he hoped it was helpfully – and Eris sighed his name with something that he could easily convince himself was proper fondness.

“Thank you, Cayde,” she whispered, and he felt his belt tighten.

He knew a goodbye when he heard one, and breathless, eyes still closed, he managed to get out in a rush –

“Pleasure’s mine, Eris, let me know when you want-“

More gently this time, he found himself outside of her apartment door, gently touching down. He looked down, concerned about his pants, only to find a glittering green and black seam covering where the cut had been. It was pretty, and cool against his plates.

“Oh, thank you, Eris,” he said to the door, “Appreciate it. All of it, yenno?”

The door didn’t move this time, and after a long wait, he nodded once, to himself, and turned to leave. It wasn’t until he was halfway home that he finally put his hands in his pockets and felt a piece of paper there. Heart suddenly hammering in his chest, he opened it, unfolding the paper, and in the same handwriting that had had her ramen order:

[Next Saturday. Your place. Please have kitchen prepared.]

Sundance spun sideways out of his chest, and with a grin of victory Cayde-6 turned to his Ghost. Her lone eye blinking between the note Cayde-6 held and Cayde-6 himself, she waited for whatever it was that Cayde was going to say.

“I _totally_ have a date with Eris Morn!!”

With a scoff, Sundance rolled back into motes of Light, not bothering to give him a response.

“You can’t say I don’t! I have a date with Eris Morn!”

Buoyed along by his incredibly good luck, Cayde-6 jogged home so he could start getting his kitchen into proper shape for someone other than him to cook in it. It would only take a few minutes, but he wanted to start now so he could take as many delays as he wanted to think back on the night he had just spent with Eris before getting his work done.

This was _awesome_.


	3. A Way Into the Future

Cayde collapsed down onto his couch, covering his face with his hands and rattling out a groan.

Everything hurt.

He hadn’t been in the field in what felt like _centuries_ and he would have rather been tossed around a couple dozen times by something big and angry and ugly than go back to the day he’d just gotten done with.  

Two Hunters.

Gone.

The Vex had taken them, paracausality, their bodies were more than likely _alive_ but the Ghosts were both dead. Gone. It didn’t matter, whichever way it was. He had lost two more Hunters. He could have helped them, he had no small experience with the Vex, if he had _been there_ he could have helped them, but instead, two more Hunters were gone and he…

He was so, so tired.

His cloak, boots, and shirt all transmatted off of him, and he reached for the closest bottle of liquor. Sundance bridged the gap between him and the drink, flashing the bottle to his hand. He just. He just really didn’t want to be sober. He had held it together at the table, he had kept his cool, he had been the fucking **Hunter Vanguard** for as long as he could bear to be before he was just overwhelmed.

Cayde dropped his head back on the back of the couch and groaned.

He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to deal with this. But his brain-chips wouldn’t cooperate. They just kept running over and over and over what had happened and how it could have been made so that it hadn’t happened, that they wouldn’t have died, that it would have been _right_.

There was a distinct downside to the programming hiccups of Exos. He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t wind down, couldn’t do anything but try and get through how much everything in him screamed for something else to have happened.

What was the fucking point of being in charge if he couldn’t keep his people safe? Why was this what he had to do when he could have been there with them?

He couldn’t save everyone – he was very well aware of that, but he could have saved them.

Tomorrow would be another day. Another chance to do better, another chance to keep his people safe, another chance to be the sort of Vanguard his Hunters deserved.

Tonight?

Tonight he was going to get fucking plastered and try to beat his brain-chips into submission that way. They couldn’t scream all the ways he fucked up if he wasn’t aware enough to listen to them.

Was it healthy?

No, fuck no, it wasn’t. But Cayde really didn’t feel like being _healthy_ right then. Two of his Hunters were gone, ripped out of the fabric of space and time and set in a paracausal recursive loop. Forever.

“ _Fuck_.”

He took a deep breath, and then a _deep_ drink of his liquor. He could do this, he had done this before –

There was a knock at his door. Cayde groaned, trying to find the words he wanted to use to tell the person to fucking _fuck off_ , but before he could, he heard his door opening and whoever it was let themselves into his apartment.

Now, the only people who should have the ability to do that had known that he had had a shitty, awful day and left him alone. He was sitting up (oh _hello_ a sudden rush of drunkenness that sitting had been hiding from him) too quick, already preparing to shout whoever it was down out of whatever stupid idea they had of getting him to do more work –

Eris was standing there, holding…

Cayde sighed, covering his face with one hand and collapsing back onto the couch. Of all the _fucking_ things to have happen today as well, it was the day he was supposed to have a date with Eris Morn. He was too drunk, too sad, too _not what the world needed_ right then that he really didn’t think he could be any sort of good company.

“I’m…sorry. I forgot. It’s. It’s not a good day, Eris, I’m real sorry but can we-“

“You’re wearing Vermillion?”

“Two Hunters today. Vex. Paracausality. Their Ghosts are dead. They might not be, Eris please, can we re-“

“Have you eaten?”

“I don’t need to eat,” Cayde-6 snaps, and then groans. “Sorry. No. Haven’t eaten. Don’t need to. Don’t want to.”

“I’m making food in your kitchen.”

He moved to get up, but the world started spinning really hard. Confused, he looked to the bottle in his hand. It was nearly empty. Apparently he had been drinking a little harder than he had anticipated. There wasn’t anything he could do about that. He was too drunk. Too drunk to object as Eris walked confidently through his apartment, into his kitchen, and started in on her work, and definitely too drunk to want to do anything about it anyway.

Cayde had prepared his kitchen, he’d been so excited for this date with Eris that he had gotten everything ready days in advance and then eaten out for his meals since so he wouldn’t mess it up. Everything was ready to go, and he heard the sounds of Eris cooking before too long.

Really, he wanted to help, he wanted to go flirt with her and be his usual normal self but he really couldn’t bring it up in himself to do that. He was so fucking tired and angry and sad and _really_ drunk.

Settling for just setting his bottle down and laying back on his couch felt like a goddamn betrayal of his evening but Eris was here, and he knew she’d worn Vermillion for every single Hunter, and she needed to be comforted, he needed to be Up and Active for her, so that he could allay her concerns. If he could sober himself up enough he could distract her.

Keep the crawling of concerns and fear and everything dark and dangerous in the world out of sight. Out of mind. He just had to find a joke, had to sober up enough to get rid of his own anger and fear and be there for someone else. He had to try, that was his job, he had to try.

He took a deep, deep breath. If he could center himself –

“Stay there, Cayde-6. Just sit.”

All the wind went out of his sails and he just collapsed back against his couch. Everything in his brain was too loud to object, and with what remained of his brain-chips that weren’t swimming in alcohol were no more happy with the situation than the rest of them.

God dammit he was the Vanguard. He had to be there for his Hunters. Eris was one of –

“Food is almost ready, then we can eat, and talk, yes?”

He sighed. There wasn’t anything he could say to that. Eris was not the sort who would be budged by anything he could muster up. Not in this state, and not generally, anyway. She was amazing like that.

“You’re amazing, Eris,” he said, without even really thinking about it. His brain was too full of mush to even bother trying to coach it in some sort of nicer tone.

She was amazing. She was a Hunter, no matter what other people said. No matter what anyone said. She was one of _his_. No one compared to her, she had done so much, so much in all of her time, and…and he wanted to tell her that. He wanted to make sure that she knew that. She was here, making him food, and he was too drunk to do anything except look at her, working up the nerve and gumption to tell her everything that he was feeling right then.

But all he could muster was cracking an eye open and watching her through the haze of alcohol.

She was gorgeous.

She moved confidently through his kitchen, going about her meal preparation for the both of them without asking him for any sort of clarification or needing help. Sure, sure he could have been sober for this. If the day had been better, if things had not gone so terribly bad, he would have been in the kitchen with her, wrapping his arm around her waist, pressing his mouth to the back of her neck. Maybe trying to see if there was enough time in whatever she was making to take a few moments to have a little bit of a quickie up against the countertops.

His plates were shifting already at the thought, the arousal a little more cutting and keening now that he was…sad. Sad and drunk and horny.

Eris looked up at him, her mouth quirking into a little smile.

“Perhaps food first, Cayde-6. You look like you need to eat something.”

He blinked.

“Have…was I?”

“Talking out loud, yes.”

Man, Cayde-6 would feel embarrassed but he was pretty sure he was actually incapable of feeling that emotion in any way, shape, or form. If she knew that he thought she was hot and he was down to fuck, that wasn’t bad. It was maybe not going to be the most eloquent thing he had ever said, he could have made a better go of it if he had been a little bit more sober and a lot bit less sad, but that was just where he was in his day.

He grinned, leaning his head back against the couch. She was so pretty.

So, so pretty.

His eyes drifted shut for a moment, and then, Eris was tapping him gently on the knee. He shook his head, the world still swimming, but there was some clarity that had not been there before. There was also the heavy, delicious smell of…Well, it smelled delicious.

“It’s Solyanka. Thought it would be a good choice, turns out I was right, for more reasons than I had originally thought.”

She sounded fond. Or he was imagining it. Whichever. The soup smelled amazing. He was hungry. She handed him a large, fragrant bowl of solyanka, and without any sort of complaint or back talk, Cayde-6 dug in on it, happy to be eating. It tasted –

“This is _so good_ , Eris,” he said, a little awestruck, but mostly just _so_ happy to have such good food in his mouth.

She hummed, her toes tapping briefly against the ground, a happy hum starting in the back of her throat. It was short enough and fast enough that he could have easily, _easily_ missed it if he hadn’t been paying such close attention to her, but he had been, and he had heard it and now, he needed to blank a bit of his current memory so he could make certain he never forgot Eris Morn tapping her feet and humming the first few bars to a Russian ballet under her breath at a compliment.

He needed to remember that forever.

She focused on eating, and so did Cayde-6. The soup was hearty and delicious, and before he could ask for something to sop up the rest of it up with, she pressed half of a still _very_ warm loaf of bread into his hands.

“Think I love you,” he mumbled down into the bowl, quickly shoveling the bread and what remained of the meat and pickles in his mouth.

His stomach was full and he was a little too warm, partially from the alcohol and partly from the incredibly hot soup he had just eaten. The sorrow dragged at him, still. He still missed his Hunters, he still wasn’t really in the mood for…well he could be in the mood, but really, he was just so, so tired.

But he didn’t want to just –

“Let us get you to bed, Cayde-6. It’s been a hard, long, day for you, hasn’t it?”

Her tone was carefully gentled. Watching him struggle with this, seeing him vulnerable, she understood something more about him. She wasn’t going to say anything to him about what he was going through. She had never seen him wear Vermillion, and she…perhaps understood now that he didn’t _want_ people to know when he was wearing the Vermillion.

There was still sorrow.

But one not for others to look at.

He blinked at her, trying to figure out what it was that he wanted to say in response to that, because he definitely wanted to say _something_. This was supposed to be a date night, was supposed to be something he had been looking forward to – and he had been looking forward to it and everything had kind of gone sideways, but she was still in his apartment and he still wanted to make this a proper date but he _was_ tired and it _had_ been a long day.

He wanted to lay down. He wanted to go to sleep. He wanted this day to be over. He could apologize to Eris later, take her out to a real nice dinner somewhere, get things back to normal, really try again at this whole night. Impress her. She deserved better than this.

A little mutely, he nodded, getting up and moving towards his bedroom.

Eris stood, taking both of their bowls, and moved towards the kitchen. Cayde knew he should say something, that he should try and say _anything_ to her to justify what this had been, to try and assure her that he appreciated the effort she had put in on this, that he loved the food, that he wished he had been in better spirits and more aware and more present for her but…if he had to talk, had to focus on his words, he’d probably make more of a mess than he had already.

So he shook his head, mumbled a quiet “Thank you, Eris, ‘m sorry,” and then shuffled towards his bed.

He didn’t expect anything else. He’d made a right shit of the day, but he was full, he was kinda warm, and the room was spinning and he wanted to go to sleep. He collapsed into bed, his clothes transmatting off of him in a flash. It was all he could manage. This day sucked.

There was about ten minutes, where he vaguely heard Eris cleaning up his kitchen. Another spike of anxiety and fear drilled through his chest. He’d have to apologize for that later, too. Fix it. Make it better. He could make it better. Not right now, but eventually, he could make it better.

There was a moment of stillness, just before he drifted off to sleep, he felt his bed dip down. Blinking himself back awake, he looked across his bed. Eris was lying next to him, her three glowing eyes staring at him from behind her mask. He wanted to say something – anything – to her, to thank her, to ask a question, but he only could reach an arm out, a wordless question that she answered by curling herself up against him.

He didn’t know how to parse the emotions in his chest. He didn’t want to think too hard about it. Didn’t want to question it. Didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted to hold her close and let the day _finally_ come to an end.

She said something, as he drifted off, lulled by the chill of her body against his plates, and he didn’t have the mental fortitude to respond to it, let alone remember it.

The day was over.

He went to sleep.

* * *

He woke up, and blearily, immediately, knew it was a few minutes before three in the morning. His internal clock would never let him be unaware of _when_ it was. Eris was still there

She was dozing, but as soon as he moved, she stirred, her eyes blinking open, illuminating the room more than his own blue eyes ever could hope to do.

“Eris?”

She didn’t say anything. Just watched him, unmoving. Waiting.

“…You didn’t have to stay.”

She shrugs.

”I did not have to. I chose to.”

A dozen questions welled up in his chest, but he squashed them all. There was nothing he wanted to question about this. He wanted to just enjoy it, he didn’t want to ruin whatever it was that _this_ was. He’d made an ass of himself, a drunken ass of himself, forgetting their date, and she’d still chosen to come lay down with him after feeding him. She hadn’t had to do any of that.

He hadn’t expected it.

It…he…

“Breathe, Cayde-6. Breathe. You’re going to be alright,” she said kindly, brushing her fingers down the side of his face.

That made him shiver. He leaned into the touch, exhaling slowly, relaxing. Her touch made him ache, in wholly inappropriate ways. She’d already done so much for him, she’d _been_ so much for him today, just someone he could rely on, someone who wouldn’t ask anything of him when he had nothing to give that he couldn’t –shouldn’t – wouldn’t – dare to ask anything more of her.

That didn’t stop his plates from shifting open, or the way the one faulty fan in his chest started whirring over-loud in the quiet of his bedroom. Her touch was chill on his perpetually over-warm plates and synth-flesh.

“Thank you, Eris. For tonight. Everything.”

She hummed at him, her fingers skating down his neck to his chest, where she sketched out random patterns and designs, just…petting him. Enjoying the touch, soothing the ragged edge of sorrow that still pulled him in seventeen thousand different directions, Cayde let his eyes drift close again.

When Eris leaned in to press a kiss to the base of his horn, he nearly flinched out of raw emotive startling. Looking back to her, he was surprised to see her eyes closed. Her hands still moved across his chest, sending little flickers of cold across him. He wasn’t going to shiver, that felt rude, but the sensation made his mechanical heart skip a beat or two.

“It is…it is nothing for you to worry yourself with, Cayde-6. You…I wanted to do this. I would not do it if I did not believe it necessary, and was not willing to do it without concern or complaint. I…understand mourning.”

Cayde reached out with his other arm, wanting to pull Eris closer, but not wanting to impose. Not after everything she had already done for him that day. Still. If she wanted to be closer, he really, really would like for her to come closer.

There was something he thought was a pretty dismissive sigh, and he was well and truly willing to just let her stay where she was, but then Eris was shifting closer, pressing herself up against him and tugging his arm over her when he hesitated for just a moment too long. That weird double-thump of his mechanical heart was back. He couldn’t help it. He was a hopeless, utterly hopeless man and even more utterly hopeless when it came to romance.

He wanted to say something, to ask a question, to try and clarify just what it was that this moment was going to be – this was more than just random fucking, right? This was more than just two people whose bodies happened to fit neatly against each others, right? This _was_ something more, right?

But before he could ask, Eris’ mouth was on his.

That was good.

Better than good.

He was still a little drunk, he’d tell himself, later, when he was thinking about this. He was still a little drunk, which is why he moaned _so_ appreciatively when her hands reached for his hips and pulled him against her. It was fine, he was worked up and Eris – well shit, Eris was the hottest Hunter in the room, and Cayde was not even a little ashamed to admit that.

Not to her, even, whispering as her mouth worked across his, the beautiful aspect of having a vocal box that did not rely on his mouth to move. He could give his everything over to kissing her and still have _something_ in his chest purring her name, telling her how beautiful she is, how much he appreciated everything she had done. Maybe he wasn’t the most eloquent, maybe he was a little slurred still, and maybe with his mouth preoccupied he wasn’t super clear but…

Damn. Eris was amazing.

He liked this. He liked it a _lot_. He liked her a lot, and the realization had a startled groan starting up in the back of his throat.

Eris’ head dipped to where the sound came from, her teeth nipping at the synth-flesh and wires there, not to terribly hard, but enough to get him to stop talking. Just…just because it felt so right. His head fell back, and he pulled her against him, a bit harder, rolling his hips against hers.

Carefully, but with the ease of someone who had all the practice in the world with the action, Eris rolls him onto his back, sliding atop him, not moving her mouth from his neck for even a moment. He rested his hands on her waist, letting her dictate what happened and when. He wanted her to take her time with him, wanted her to _take_ from him like he’d taken from her. Her time, her efforts, and none of it had been paid back correctly because he’d been too wrapped up in his own bullshit.

He knew somewhere, there was a piece of armor with a fresh stripe of Vermillion down it, over the place where hundreds of other stripes had been painted. There was Vermillion down his faceplates, probably smeared now, across his bedsheets and his couch. The only mourning he ever allowed himself was in private, when no one could see him, when no one could question him and what he did and when. When no one could count his mourning as the mark of a poor leader.

“It was not your fault, Cayde.”

His chest screeched, everything in him grinding to a halt. Everything in him stopped. He felt the clock that lived in his brain skip a second.

She called him _Cayde_.

She called him Cayde and she kissed him. He didn’t need to breathe but it still felt like she’d just taken all of his breath away with that simple little drop of his number. He wasn’t Cayde-6, the 6th Cayde. He was just Cayde. Just Cayde. He was just Cayde.

He was just Cayde and Eris was kissing him, and his hands were on her hips and he was already naked and she was on top of him and really, just, really, it had been a terrible day and the only thing he wanted to do was drown in something nicer than how he currently felt.

Eris was here. She chose to stay.

“Please, Eris,” he asked, his voice taking on a wheedling tone he hardly ever used. “Please, just…call me that again.”

Fuck.

She stilled where she was.

Shit.

Her mouth slid down his chest, her fingers skating after, keeping him drowning in touch and contact, but not doing what he had asked of her, which was fair, it was so fair, it had only been a slip of the tongue, it wasn’t like that, even if he found himself suddenly _wanting_ it to be like that and then her mouth was on his cock, and she was under the blankets still so it wasn’t even like he could see her all that well, just feel her too-long, chilled tongue wrap around his cock. Too wrapped up in his own thoughts, Cayde missed when her thumb pressed into his hip, and when her fingers wrapped around his thigh, but he didn’t miss the way she pulled his leg wide and took her mouth from his cock to bite at the thin synth-flesh right in the sensitive joint of his leg and hip.

With a curse, he bucked against her mouth, shuddering at the sudden, harsh counterpoint before she slid her tongue across where she had bitten

“Be _still_ Cayde.”

The return of his name on her lips made him _feel_ something, and he didn’t know what to do or what to say other than to just –

“ _Eris!_ ”

She chuckled and slid back up his body to kiss him again, before she slowly, carefully, slid down onto his cock with a overjoyed sigh. The next sound he wanted to make got stuck in his throat, and with a shout, Eris rode him.

“ _Cayde_ ,” she whispered, leaning down, pressing her chest to his, keeping his center vents closed.

She was still wearing her under-suit, he could feel the press of her clothes against his vent as she made a slow, leisurely ride of him. There was nothing rushed about this, and the soft, gentle way she called him _Cayde_ as she slowly worked on making him lose his entire mind. It didn’t take long.

He was too worked up. Too many emotions, too much ebb and flow, his mind, even with all the great many thousands of partitioned thoughts it could comprehend at a single moment, wasn’t so well put together that he could last through this. His overload rushed through his system and, boneless in the afterglow, Eris slid off of him and curled against his side again. Breathless, he turned to her, wanting to say something, anything, but he could only look into her covered eyes and…forget himself. His heart beat over-hard in his chest and too many thoughts roared up but he knew, even if he rarely, if ever listened to that voice, he needed to hold the thoughts back.

“Thank you, Eris.”

* * *

In the morning, he woke up.

Alone.

Groaning, Cayde rolled onto his back, covering his eyes with both hands. It…goddamit. He had fucked it up. God fucking dammit. He fucked up and he was going to have to go find Eris and apologize. Profusely. For everything. Whatever it was that he had done, he would have to apologize.

There was…he knew he’d not had his best showing and even if Eris went back to never wanting anything to do with him ever again, he would absolutely understand. Still. He wanted to talk to her. To apologize to her face, to – even if an explanation would not forgive him – he wanted her to understand where he had been coming from. To _try_ and explain. If she told him to fuck off, he would understand.

But.

But he wanted to at least try. He wanted to try.

Which first meant he needed to get up out of bed, wash up, and get ready to go be the Hunter Vanguard to a group of Guardians who were in mourning still. His pain would wait. His pain would always wait. He should know that. Last night had been a mistake. He had known that. But he couldn’t throw Eris out, and the food had been so good, and everything…

“Ugh.”

 


End file.
